Examines the literature on current trends in student development, focusing on the framework within which student personnel professionals operate; service to new groups of community college students; the effects of failing public financial support and increased reliance on industrial support; and the growing emphasis on assessment and…

This is the first in a series of reports on the educational progress of Texas public schools. It reviews the concerns that led to the development of the integrated accountability system now used in Texas and examines this system relative to those of other states. A major new research and evaluation effort, the Statewide Texas Educational Progress…

The School-Based Management and Accountability Program, also known as the "ABCs of Public Education," or just "the ABCs," is the statewide school-based accountability program for public schools in North Carolina. This document reports the results of the 1997-98 ABCs, in the second year of the implementation of the ABCs in…

To assure that students graduating from the institutions of higher education in Georgia possess basic academic literacy, an essay test was devised to provide system-wide information on the status of student competence in the areas of reading and writing and to identify those students who do not attain the expected levels of competence. The…

Three propositions which may suggest a strategy for meeting the measurement needs of education are presented: (1) Educational measurement possesses enough techniques and principles to permit tackling problems for their intrinsic importance, rather than for their convenience of fit to answers we already have; (2) Measurement needs are a subset of…

High stakes testing is associated with controversy and dialogue in this era of calls for accountability on the part of educators, and the controversy has been strengthened by the national testing plans included in the Leave No Child Behind Act (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001). A look at the literature on high stakes testing and…

One Midwestern state has chosen a model of state assessment in which local school districts are responsible for developing the strategies to measure and report their students' performance on state-adopted content standards. When students are not measured on common instruments, district accountability becomes an added challenge. This paper presents…

In 1998, the Kentucky General Assembly called for a new testing system known as the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) to determine how much children are learning in school. This brochure tells the basics about Kentucky's system of public education. The "Core Content" document describes what students should know and be…

The Texas Education Code requires the Commissioner of Education to develop and propose a system for evaluating the progress of students eligible for exemption from the statewide assessment program under current law. This report summarizes the proposed system for limited English proficient (LEP) students. It includes proposed changes to the…

The Texas Education Code requires the Commissioner of Education to develop and propose a system for evaluating the progress of students eligible for exemption from the statewide assessment program under current law. This report summarizes the proposed system for special education students. It includes proposed changes to the assessment and…

Kentucky has been implementing test-based accountability for almost a decade, making it a good site for studying the effects of the milepost testing model. In 1996, a study was undertaken of the impact of standards-based assessment on classroom practices in Kentucky. Kentucky teachers (n=365) were surveyed about their classroom practices and other…

This publication outlines tests that are included in the North Carolina Testing Program. The end-of-grade tests are curriculum based multiple-choice reading comprehension and mathematics tests that measure curricular competencies described in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. These tests are administered to all eligible students within…

Surveys the legal challenges to teacher certification based on objective competency tests; analyzes the theories of the challenges; and discusses implementation of these tests with particular reference to the declining number of eligible minority candidates. Describes "custom designed" certification programs used by a few states. (MLF)

Five articles in this special issue present the approaches to accountability found in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland, provinces that represent 85% of all Canadian elementary and secondary school students. The articles are then discussed by representatives of four national Canadian educational associations. (SLD)

Reviews the origin, practice, and effects of the "payment by results" law in late nineteenth-century England, in which elementary education was funded on the basis of students' examination results. Argues that such a system of educational accountability severely hampered development of English and Welsh elementary education. (PAA)